Prolog - introductory comments[source: J. R. Fisher's tutorial, www.csupomona.edu/~jrfisher/www/prolog_tutorial]

! a logical and declarative programming language

! short for PROgramming in LOGic

! its heritage: 1960's and 1970's theorem-prover and automated-deduction research

! its inference mechanism is based upon Robinson's resolution principle (1965) together with mechanisms for extracting answers proposed by Green (1968).

! the "first" Prolog was "Marseille Prolog" based on work by Colmerauer (1970).

what is declarative programming?[source: Wikipedia, "Declarative Programming", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarative_programming ]

! in declarative programming, you express "the logic of a computation without describing its control flow";

! ...that is, you describe "what the program should accomplish, rather than describing how to go about accomplishing it";

! ("this is in contrast with imperative programming, which requires an explicitly provided algorithm")

what is logic programming?[source: Wikipedia, "Logic Programming", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_programming]

! "in its broadest sense ... [it is] the use of mathematical logic for computer programming."

! "in the narrower sense in which it is more commonly understood, [it] is the use of logic as both a declarative and procedural representation language."

! "it is based upon the fact that a backwards reasoning theorem-prover applied to declarative sentences in the form of implications [can treat] the implications as goal-reduction procedures"

! ...as we'll see in Prolog;

uses of Prolog[source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog]

! designed for natural language processing

! has been used in a variety of other areas as well, including:

" theorem proving

" expert systems

" games

" automated answering systems

" ontologies

" sophisticated control systems

! "...modern Prolog environments support creation of grgraphical user interfaces, as well as administrative and networked applications."

SWI-Prolog! the version of Prolog we will be using in this course

! available for free from http://www.swi-prolog.org/

! has versions for Windows, Mac, Linux

! interesting buzzwords from its installation window:

" "...an open source ISO/Edinburgh-style Prolog compiler including modules, ... libraries, garbage-collector,...C/C++-interface, multiple threads, GNU-readline interface, coroutining, constraint programming, global variables, very fast compiler. Including packages clib (Unix process control, sockets...), cpp (C++ interface), sgml (reading XML...), ...ODBC interface & XPCE (Graphics UI toolkit, integrated editor (Emacs-clone) and graphical debugger)."

SWI-Prolog - starting and stopping! command-line interface

! (installed in /opt/local/bin when I installed on Mac OS X in Spring 2010)

! ...since that's in my path, then typing: swipl

...in a Terminal window starts it up;

! According to the SWI-Prolog manual, for Windows:

" "Opening a .pl file will cause swipl-win.exe to start, change directory to the directory in which the file-to-open resides and load this file."

! to quit: type halt. at the prompt...

SWI-Prolog - example 1 (2 pgs)Macintosh-194:~ smtuttle$ swipl% library(swi_hooks) compiled into pce_swi_hooks 0.00 sec, 3,688 bytes

Welcome to SWI-Prolog (Multi-threaded, 64 bits, Version 5.8.3)

Copyright (c) 1990-2009 University of Amsterdam.

SWI-Prolog comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software,

and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.

Please visit http://www.swi-prolog.org for details.

For help, use ?- help(Topic). or ?- apropos(Word).

?- halt.Macintosh-194:~ smtuttle$

Logic Programming Concepts - part 1[source: Scott, "Programming Language Pragmatics III", Ch. 11, p. 546]

! "Logic programming systems allow the programmer to state a collection of axioms from which theorems can be proven."

! "The user of a logic program states a theorem, or goal, and the language implementation attempts to find a collection of axioms and inference steps (including choices of values for variables) that together imply that goal."

Logic Programming Concepts - part 2[source: Scott, Ch. 11, p. 546]

! "In almost all logic languages [including Prolog], axioms are written in a standard form known as a Horn clause.

" A Horn clause consists of a head, or consequent term H, and a body consisting of terms Bi:

H <-- B1, B2, ..., Bn

" The semantics of this statement are that when the Bi are all true, we can deduce that H is true as well.

" When reading aloud, we say, "H, if B1, B2, ..., and Bn."

! Horn clauses can be used to capture most, but not all, logical statements."

Resolution[source: Scott, Ch. 11, p. 546]

! "...to derive new statements, a logic programming system combines existing statements, canceling like terms, through a process known as resolution."

! EXAMPLE:

" If we know that A and B imply C,

" and that C implies D,

" we can deduce that A and B imply D:

C <-- A, B

D <-- C

-----------------

D <-- A, B

Unification[source: Scott, Ch. 11, p. 546]

! To add power to this, "In general, terms like A, B, C, and D may consist not only of constants ("Arcata is rainy"), but also of predicates applied to atoms or to variables:

rainy(Rochester), rainy(Arcata), rainy(X)

! During resolution, free variables may acquire values through unification with expressions in matching terms

flowery(X) <-- rainy(X)

rainy(Arcata)

----------------------------

flowery(Arcata)

Prolog specifics, part 1[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! "...a Prolog interpreter runs in the context of a database of clauses (Horn clauses) that are assumed to be true."

! "Each clause is composed of terms, which may be constants, variables, or structures."

" "A constant is either an atom or a number."

" A structure can be thought of as either a logical predicate or a data structure."

Prolog specifics: Atoms[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! "Atoms in Prolog are similar to symbols in Lisp.

! "lexically, an atom looks like:

" an identifier beginning with a lowercase letter,

" a sequence of punctuation characters,

" or a quoted character string

! Examples:

foo

my_Const

+

'Hi, Mom'

Prolog specifics: Numbers[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! "Numbers resemble the integers and floating point constants of other programming languages"

! Examples:

1328.007

Prolog specifics: Variables[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! "A variable looks like an identifier beginning with an UPPERCASE letter:

Foo My_var X

" Variables can take be instantiated to (i.e., can take on) arbitrary values at run time as a result of unification.

" The scope of every variable is limited to the clause in which it appears.

" There are no declarations.

" As in Lisp, type checking occurs only when a program attempts to use a variable in a particular way at run time.

Prolog specifics: Structures[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! "Structures consist of an atom called the functor and a list of arguments:

rainy(arcata)

teaches(tuttle, cs335)

bin_tree(foo, bin_tree(bar, arc))

" Prolog requires the opening parenthesis to come IMMEDIATELY after the functor, with NO intervening space;

" Arguments can be arbitrary terms: constants, variables, or (nested) structures."

Prolog specifics: Structures (cont'd)[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! "Internally, a Prolog implementation can represent a structure using Lisp-like cons-cells;

! CONCEPTUALLY, the programmer may prefer to think of certain structures (e.g., rainy) as logical predicates.

" We use the term "predicate" to refer to the combination of a functor and an "arity" (number of arguments.

" The predicate rainy has arity 1.

" The predicate teaches has arity 2."

Clauses in a Prolog database[source: Scott, Ch. 11, pp. 547-548]

! The clauses in a Prolog database can be classified as facts or rules, each of which ends with a PERIOD.

! A fact is a Horn clause without a right-hand side.

" It looks like a single term (the implication symbol is implicit):

rainy(arcata).

! A rule has a RHS:

snowy(X) :- rainy(X), cold(X).

" The token :- is the implication symbol;

" The comma indicates "and"

!

Clauses, continued! Variables that appear in the head of a Horn

clause are universally quantified:

" for all X, X is snowy if X is rainy and X is cold.

! can also "...write a clause with an empty LEFT-hand-side. Such a clause is called a query, or a goal.

" Queries do NOT appear in Prolog programs.

" Rather, one builds a database of facts and rules,

" and then initiates execution by giving the Prolog interpreter (or the compiled Prolog program) a query to be answered (i.e., a goal to be proven)